


Robin

by quicksparrows



Series: Side by Side – Chrobin [13]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9598568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: A couple little vignettes on the discovery of one's lost name.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A twitter friend got me hyped up on Chrom introspection today so I started cleaning up some old unpublished Chrobin works again. Might be a few of these coming tonight, we'll see how far I get.

.

 

They've been sitting in the armory tent for an hour now, sorting through their stock of tomes for the mages. It's mindless work, but Ada doesn't mind it; there's something to be said about the quietness of the tent, and being productive without much effort. This tome there, that tome there. Make sure everyone's satisfied with their lot for the coming battles. Ensure everyone is sufficiently armed without being burdened by extra stock. It comes easy to Ada.

If Tharja weren't on the same duty, it would be the most peaceful time of her week.

"Is that a Mire?" Tharja asks, breaking the silence –– a change from her usual habits of skulking, slinking, sneaking around. She's pointing just beyond Ada's line of sight.

"Hmm?" Ada hums, and then she picks up the book on the top of the pile. There is a Mire underneath, indeed. "Oh."

"Let me have that one," Tharja says. 

"We'll see, Tharja," Ada says, setting it aside. They always have to ration the best tomes –– their brittle old pages fall apart so quickly.

Tharja scoffs, and for a moment things are quiet again. Ada waits for the bait, the little barb to keep the conversation rolling.

"Did I ever tell you that you say your name wrong?" Tharja asks. Predictable, and yet still surprising. She'd expected snide comments about her husband, or their recent wedding, but this takes her off guard. Ada pauses for a beat, and then takes the bait.

"What do you mean?" Ada asks.

"It's the accent," Tharja says. "You know, the longer we spend time together, the more I hear it in your voice. You can lose your memories and talk like the Ylisseans, but you can't lose your  _real_ accent."

Ada sets down her books.

"I don't follow," Ada says.

"They call you  _Ay-dah_ , but it's said  _Ai-dah_ ," Tharja says. She is smug, all raised chin and half-lidded eyes. "Ylisseans are terrible butchers of our tongue; you wouldn't believe how many people in this army call me  _Thar-jah_. It just doesn't roll off their tongues... but it rolls  _beautifully_  off of  _yours_."

"Tharja," Ada repeats back, smooth as it is supposed to be.  _Thar-yah._  She pauses, hems, haws, moves the conversation around: "I feel like I want to know more about Plegia, sometimes, about who I really am..."

The family she's made stands in stark contrast to her past. Touching on it is tricky, and it requires a little bit of care. One doesn't just investigate their past when––

"Lord Chrom wouldn't like that, hmm?" Tharja murmurs. "Can't have a wife who is the enemy."

Ada thinks it is just the same whether Chrom admits it or not, unfortunately.

"He's not really enthused about it," Ada says, slowly. How much do you tell Tharja? "It also doesn't really matter. I don't have any memories of Plegia. I wear the Eyes is because my coat is the only thing I have from my past, and even then it doesn't have much  _meaning_  to me beyond that. What would knowing more do?"

"But you  _want_  to know more," Tharja prompts.

"Why wouldn't I?" Ada muses. "I don't have anything else, so it's that or nothing."

Tharja heaves a dreamy sigh, and she leans in against Ada's shoulder casually. Her nails are sharp, and yet she drums them against Ada's coat like a caress, one she feels even through her coat.

"I can tell you more, you know," Tharja says. "I can tell you everything about Plegia."

"That'd be very sweet of you," Ada says, patting Tharja gently, but she leans away. "I'll have to decline, though. I'm more focused on building a future than uncovering the past."

 

 

* * *

 

 

It's not so easy. It sticks in her brain like a fly in honey. The thought is too tempting.

"When we first met," Ada asks, as she runs her fingers through Chrom's hair, parting it wrong. "Did I first say my name was  _Ai-dah_ , or  _Ay-dah_?"

Chrom opens his eyes just to give her a dubious look -- he has his ear against her rounded belly, his hand gently running back and forth as he listens for their child inside. His cheek is warm, comfortable. 

" _Ay-dah_ ," he says. She feels the rumble of his voice through her skin, especially when it dips amused: "You would have corrected me if I repeated it back to you wrong."

He smiles in a way that gives him little crows' feet around his eyes, and she snorts and tousles his hair off his forehead.

"Well, yes, I would have," she says. "But it's been bugging me all week. I think my name is supposed to be  _Ai-dah._ "

"What?" Chrom laughs. "What gave you that idea?"

"Tharja says it's a Plegian name," Ada says.

Chrom runs his hand around the globe of her belly again, and he sits up a little on his elbow.

"Don't put much stock in what Tharja says," Chrom says. " _Ay-dah_  isn't far from a Ylissean name, either. See- _dah._ "

"Then why aren't I  _Caeda_?" Ada asks, and she laughs despite herself, and Chrom leans up to kiss her but then they're both distracted by a kick under his palm. They fall silent for a second, both looking down.

"Our daughter thinks you worry too much," Chrom says, looking back to her with those dark eyes, and Ada grins.

"A daughter, huh?"

"Yeah," Chrom says, "I decided."

"I don't think that's something you really decide," Ada replies. "But okay. If you're right we'll say it was meant to be, if you're wrong we pretend that never happened."

"Agreed," Chrom says, and then he does kiss her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Have you thought of a name yet?" 

This question is called down the hall, at one of those voice levels where the speaker is trying not to raise their voice but must anyway. Yelling a whisper, whispering a yell, something like that –– it drives Ada insane, because Ada's heard this question a thousand times now. This time it's from Maribelle, who has been responsible for approximately nine hundred and ninety of the previous questions. 

 _A name has to have meaning,_  Maribelle would say next. And then:  _What if you named her something low-born or unfitting her station?_  And then:  _I just want to help, you know!!_

But Ada says the same thing she'd said a thousand times before: "I don't know. It's  _traditionally_  up to Chrom."

Maribelle continues following her up the hall, huffing under her breath and swinging her parasol with such ferocity that Ada is sure she is within inches of getting swatted on the bottom.

"You know, you can have a say in it!" Maribelle crows. "Send that tradition out the window!"

"The kid absolutely  _cannot_  have a peasant name but I  _should_  absolutely override the crown prince's choice?" Ada asks. "Which is it, then? Tradition or the unestablished?"

Maribelle huffs again.

"This is  _your_  baby. What if he chooses something dated? He hardly even dresses himself to the fashions of the time, would you really want a baby named Ellis or Cornelius or  _Caeda_?"

"You know,  _Caeda_  isn't that far off of  _Ada_ ," Ada says. She feels exhausted, and she's sick of waddling. All she wants to do is get to her library in relative peace. She heaves a sigh: "And you know what, it runs in the family. So good idea, Maribelle, I will suggest it to Chrom. Caeda it is! Boy or girl, it's Caeda now."

"Ada!" Maribelle scolds her. "You should take this seriously!"

Ada sighs, turns on her heel and faces Maribelle, who pushes her lips out in a pout and glowers. Ada just throws her hands up.

"I really don't want to think about names right now," she says, voice lifting. It slips out in an upset tangle: "Please, for the love of  _everything_ , I don't even know my own name! I couldn't possibly be trusted to name a child!"

Maribelle pauses, and her fierce face softens.

"Ada, whatever does  _that_  mean?" Maribelle says. 

And so, red-faced and tired and sore and fit to burst, Ada confesses the brief story of her conversation with Tharja and the following conversation with Chrom. Maribelle softens even more at that, taking both of Ada's hands with her own and peering into her face with such sympathy.

"Dear, why didn't you just tell me? I wouldn't have pestered you if I had known!" Maribelle scolds her, gently. "You have my apologies! And well, we won't say another word on that, will we? In fact, I'll give both of them a firm talking to about imbuing you with undue stress!"

"That's really not necessary," Ada says, but she's tired. She's tired and she can't argue any more than that. 

 

* * *

 

"What about Lucina?" Chrom says softly, just barely loud enough for Ada to hear him. The baby is sleeping, after all, swaddled in a pink blanket between them and not to be disturbed.

"That's pretty," Ada says. She's staring, transfixed. It's something like wonder that this baby is now alive in her own right, and not merely an extension of her mother's body. Under the bubbling and confusing new feelings of love, there's some sort of surreal quality to the situation.

She really is a mother, now, and this is her infant daughter.  _Their_  daughter.

"Do you like it, though?" Chrom asks. He carefully tucks the blanket in a little more snugly, and he shimmies up close so the baby is cocooned right between their bodies. His hand runs up Ada's side, bracing and sweet, and she almost forgets how sore she is for a moment.

"I think it's perfect," she says. "I really do."

He sighs happily, and something like relief. She's been so hung up on names lately; they both know what she's thinking.

"I thought about it a long time," he says. "I really wanted something you'd like!"

Ada laughs under her breath, and she dips her head so her brow is against his.

"You know," he says, "I wasn't named until I was six months old. It was the same for Lissa, and probably Emmeryn, too. But I think Lucina's so perfect that I want her to have it right away."

"Sometimes you just know," Ada says, and she smiles. And maybe someday she'll know, too.

Chrom smiles, too, and he laces his fingers with hers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Plegia Castle's ceilings are high, vaulted, and the throne room floor is large enough to make Ada feel inches tall. She wonders if it's deliberate, a way for a king to feel mighty in front of his visitors. She feels anything but mighty in this moment, but that's because Ada is staring herself down, and she's almost certain she's looking into a mirror until the woman gives her a sly smile. 

Ada isn't smiling. Ada isn't sure she can smile right now, even out of defensive reflex. It's too uncomfortable.

"Ada," the woman says, in something like her own voice, but she  _croons_. "What a pretty name. Did you choose it yourself?"

Ada glances back at Chrom. He is a few steps too far away to whisper to again, but he mouths something at her ––  _what the hell is going on?_ He seems as stunned as she is.

She turns back to her doppelgänger and says: "I did. Who might you be?"

"You look like a Robin," she says, as if Ada hadn't spoken at all. "Do you like that name?"

Ada's caught between pressing questions or answering them at the sake of losing her own. Instead, she says: "My apologies, but time is running short. We must accept King Validar's ships and make haste for Valm immediately."

The woman lifts her chin a little.

"You have my best wishes, Robin," she says. "We will speak again."

"Robin?" she repeats. It sounds foreign, but it comes off her own lips like nothing.

"That's your real name," the woman says. 

"Hierophant, it is the height of disrespect to speak to the incumbent queen of Ylisse in this manner," Frederick cuts in, and though Ada is grateful to him, she feels nothing but anger suddenly.  _Robin?_

" _Queen_ ," the hierophant says, almost fondly. "My apologies!"

And Ada, stunned and lacking any tolerance for any more of this, turns on her heel and walks away, leaving Chrom and Frederick to make a more formal parting.  _Plegia be damned_ , she thinks angrily.  _If this is it, I want nothing to do with it._

 

 

* * *

 

 

It's been barely three days since they left the gorge that had been the set of their lives being turned on end, and Ada finds herself in a number of predicaments: not just at war with Valm, but at ideological war with Validar. Not just the new mother to a baby girl, but the doomed mother of a young woman who had been safeguarding them for years.  Not just Ada of mysterious origin, but  _Robin_ , the child of a Plegian king and Grimleal priest.

She and Chrom had quarreled a great number of times these past few days, but at least they've not gotten as far as sleeping with their backs turned. Instead they lie side-by-side as if in coffins, fingers sometimes brushing but little touches going unreturned. Neither is particularly happy.

"Why Ada, do you think?" Chrom asks, through the dark.

Ada isn't sure, and the question settles in her stomach like a bad meal. She turns to look at him reluctantly.

"Why did I call myself Ada?" she asks. She'd never really considered that she was  _wrong_  about her own name in its entirety. Ay-dah, Ai-dah, Caeda –– that all seems worlds away from _Robin_.

"Yes," Chrom says.

"Because I  _am_  Ada," she says. "I don't know what to say. Maybe I was Ada for a long time before meeting you. Does it  _matter_  that I picked a different name? Do you think I should just call myself Robin from now on?"

"No, no," Chrom says, empathetically. "No! That's not what I meant at all!"

Ada sighs and covers her face with her hands. She feels Chrom shift up to one elbow, to lean over her and try to console her even when she's sure he feels the need to be consoled, too.

"You're Ada," he says. "Nothing will ever change that for me! I just... I just wanted to know if it meant anything."

"Well, I don't know!" Ada says, the frustration rolling in. "Does it matter? Stop asking me questions I can't answer, it just... It just kills me that I don't know."

Chrom looks a little ashamed of himself, but he says nothing. He reaches for her, and she slouches into his arms miserably. He rests his chin against the top of her head and holds her close, and for an instant she feels trapped, unhappy, regretful of allowing him an embrace at all. Not when he––

"I'm sorry," he says, whispering into her hair. "I'm sorry, it's not fair of me to ask you those things. I'm sorry, Ada."

"It's fine," she mumbles, and then she sighs. "Chrom, if this changes things, I..."

"It doesn't," he says, cutting her off hard. He clutches her tighter. "You're Ada, not Robin."

He won't understand, Ada knows. He can't. He's always had an identity. He doesn't know what it is to search and have nothing, not a scrap of memory older than their first meeting. 

A terrifying thought strikes her: What if she someday  _wants_  to be Robin, if it means having a past?

 


End file.
